Ting: We seem to want it both ways on immigration issues

12:59 AM,
Dec. 18, 2013

Written by

Jan Ting

Perhaps Vice President Joe Biden was trying to give respectability to today's illegal immigrants by proclaiming on Wednesday that his own ancestors were illegal immigrants, too, when they fled the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. Trouble is, the vice president's claims are simply not true.

We all need to pay more attention to immigration history as it colors the perpetual debate over legal and illegal immigration. For the first century of the American republic, there were no limits on immigration. Anyone from anywhere in the world was free to come here. Indeed, our labor needs were so great ...